That one friend asked me what I wanted and I said I didn’t know and he got awful fired up, “OH MY GOSH,” he said, with his exasperated-voice, “Go and figure out what you want.”

So…I started.

Newest linocut joins my collection.

I want time for prayer.
I want time in nature.
I want slow days and beautiful, unwinding adventure.
I want the deep, hard, love-filled talks with friends.
I want nourishing food and simple clothes and God.
I want God everywhere.

I want those hard-projects that take all of my love and time and energy. And I want to get a bit stressed and frustrated and even stuck sometimes, I guess, because then I want to know the consolation of God’s rescue and the exhaled prayers of thanks when things work out.

I want my people to call me too-late at night when things get hard. I want to make them food from farm-fresh vegetables I buy at the market. I want poetry and laughter and song and memories.

I want music, dance and fireflies (God, I want fireflies).

I want bike rides to garage sales and blessings exchanged with the homeless and my hose-clad knees sliding off of imitation-leather kneelers in stale-air churches.

I want to hear words that challenge me, meet people who enlighten me, travel places that change and haunt me.

I want to work with my body to new heights of health, new feats of strength. I want to look at it–all of it–and say, sincerely, “Thank you. Thank you for what you are. I bless you.”

I want a heart full of love. I want a life full of Jesus Christ.

I want summer days in the woods and winter nights in hipster pubs with friends. Picnics on lawns, dances under stars, magic of the world unfolding.

I want to walk down streets and know people’s faces/ lives/ stories.

I want candles and Christmas carols and books that shake me and sidewalk chalk-pictures and chores, never-ending chores at my house–laundry and the bathroom and my kitchen. Plus the garden needs weeding. My blessed, blessed garden.

I want art. I want even more art. I want puppets and operas and well-meaning but slightly-lacking community theater and little-kid dance recitals. I want women whose lives push me/ inspire me to be better; men whose gentle-strong words pour courage into my heart.

I want the smack of the circus against my body–silks and bars and ropes bruising my ever-thickening skin. I want poets and storytellers who can bring tears to my eyes. I want to hold hurting hands, heads and hearts when things get hard.

I want baptisms and weddings and funerals. I want to go to them to celebrate–celebrate it all…life. Life in all of its wonder and guts and glory.